The sailfish bite was hit or miss today. Scattered reports to the North and South of sailfish bites crackled from the radio intermittently, but we held to our original gameplan to fish the stretch between ledbury and brewster reef. Our guests in town for the Orange Browl had high hopes of landing their first Miami Sailfish. With the tide and wind anything but in our favor, we bought a few gogs and made a dash south. We arrived to find a good portion of the fleet setup in the same region and set into our drift with some bad luck. While setting out the first long bait, the kite line snapped! We managed to retrieve the kite (one of the reasons I love lewis kites is that they’re equipped with floating spars) and retie quickly, but had to reset a few times to get the drift right. Scattered reports of a sailbite in 150′ to the north of the sea can had us optimistic that fish would be moving through eventually. We did manage to pick up a nice gaffer dolphin in the midst of formulating a gameplan.
With the fish on ice, we made a few more drifts but failed to connect. The sailfish bite between Fowey and the Sea Can was slow, but boats north of Government cut (off the diamonds) were reporting multiple sailfish hookups anywhere between 130′ and 200′ (with one fish caught in 230). We took our chances drifting in shallow to 145′ and it paid off. One of the largest sailfish we’ve hooked this season engulfed a large bridled goggle eye on the long line! The fish made a blistering eastward run and was brought to the boat in 24 minutes…but not before Todd could capture a few more spectacular sailfish photos.
Our anglers were ecstatic to have caught their first Miami Sailfish…and a fat one at that. This fish was easily in the 50# range and one of the largest we’ve brought to the boat in the last few weeks. The girth of the fish was amazing.
With the remaining hour and a half of the trip, the crew opted to hit the reefs and chum up a few yellow tails to complement their mahi mahi dinner. We made the trek down past Fowey to one of our favorite yellow tail and grouper spots…set up shop and in just a few minutes we had a good dozen yellow tails swirling behind the boat. Bonitas beat us up to the point where we could hardly keep a line in the water without them stealing our baits. After releasing three or four boneheads, we decided to call it quits and head home.
Hot sailfish action is definitely right around the corner!
Capt. Charlie Ellis
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